


A Dream is a Wish

by ApresMoi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, Fluff, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1419828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApresMoi/pseuds/ApresMoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has one wish but wishes always come with fine print.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in several years and maybe a little more fluffy than I would normally write but its a warm-up. Any notes and comments welcome. Thanks!

CHAPTER ONE

“Sam?”

I was studiously ignoring my brother. I had made a lifelong profession of studiously ignoring my brother.  I was a semi-professional and he wasn’t going to break me now.

I leaned my head back, staring up at the stars from my place on the sidewalk in front of our latest motel-sweet-motel; The Shade Tree Inn with a “y” spray painted over the “e” in Shade on the half-lit sign. Indeed, shady was rather fitting in describing the dilapidated old building.  The exterior was a faded pea green color and the faux shutters were shocking neon blue.  The interior, to my chagrin, was all rust and shag carpets.  Still, it wasn’t the worst I’d ever seen.  Granted when I had seen worse, it was usually some sort of monster lair or decrepit haunted property.

 “Not gonna be able to ignore me forever.” Dean tossed out from the doorway. When he realized no response was forthcoming, he sighed.  “Bitch.”

“Jerk,” I muttered under my breath. It wasn’t really a reply so much as it was an automatic reaction that I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.

“Heard that.”  With that he heads back into the room, leaving me to my thoughts.

How could I face my brother right now? How could I explain what I had done?  What we had done? I pinched the bridge of my nose feeling a headache coming on.

None of this would be happening if it hadn’t been for that stupid lamp! 

 

* * * * *

 

_Earlier that night_

“Dean, you can’t tell me you don’t think that’s slightly suspicious.”  I slap a local paper down almost on top of his mostly empty plate of questionable diner meatloaf.  His fork is poised halfway to his open mouth but his eyes are glaring at me in a look that said ‘did you really just do that?’. 

He put the meat in his mouth and chewed extra slowly just to be obnoxious before he answered.  “Yeah.  Fishy.”

“Fishy?  Dean, there have been four lottery winners in the past month that purchased tickets in town only to die in freak accidents within a week, a mayor that unexplainably gets elected to a senate seat in the middle of term, a mom-and-pop store suddenly outselling the local WalMart but then burning to the ground three weeks later,  a sixteen year old kid winning a Lamborghini and then immediately driving it straight into a lake…  I’d say that’s more than a little fishy.  I seem to remember a town that had a similar streak of good luck.”

Dean put the fork down and took a swig of his soda, seeming completely unaffected by my enthusiastic sales pitch.  It wasn’t so much that he didn’t believe me, Dean just knew that there were at least three other sightings in the area and the idea of chasing a good-luck monster kind of paled in import when compared to the rogue vampire one state over that was causing mass mayhem or the three poltergeists that were doing serious damage at a hospital thirty miles up the interstate.

“You do remember the pervy kid and the hyper depressive teddy b-,”

Dean held up a quick hand warding me off from finishing my sentence.  “Okay fine. I’ll go fish the coin out of the well or kill the good-luck fairy or whatever the hell, if you’re dead set on it.”

I nodded, gratefully but not so enthusiastically that I might give the game away.

“But you get to call Bobby to get somebody else on the hospital haunt,”  My brother gave me a cheeky grin, knowing Bobby would surely give me the 3rd degree over the course redirect.  Then the smile moved to just beyond my shoulder as a waitress approached with his slice of pie.  “Why don’t you just go ahead and do that while I make nice with the wait staff.”

I glanced at the waitress who was biting her plump bottom lip as she slid the desert plate in front of Dean.  She seemed to have freshened up her makeup as it seemed slightly heavier than before, her hair, which had been up in a knot was suddenly a blonde waterfall that was cascading down her back and I could’ve sworn her uniform was buttoned up all the way last time she was at their table. Her ample cleavage now spilled out of the lowered neckline and she pushed it forward a little bit more than was absolutely necessary.  As if anyone could possibly miss the giant flashing ‘easy pickins’ sign. “Sorry.  We were all out of apple pie.  So I brought you a cherry.  On the house.”

Her flirtatious little giggle and double entendre had me wide-eyed in awkwardness.  Was she serious? 

“Why thank you, beautiful.”  I looked at Dean and he was smiling right back at the blonde, knowing he was completely ‘in’ but still feeling out the territory to see if it was worth any hang-ups that might come along with it.  One thing I could say for Dean… he might be a ladies man but he certainly didn’t string anyone along.  It was to be understood from the start that everything was all in good fun.  There would be no phone numbers exchanged (although the woman always left a number behind anyway) and there would be no repeats.  Their lives just couldn’t accommodate relationships and his conscience couldn’t accommodate any further slights against humanity.

Although I personally thought it had something to do with the half a dozen cities we could barely set foot in because in his younger days Dean wasn’t quite so realistic and the trail of broken hearts and vengeful women was fairly long and winding.

He kept the grin firmly locked in place even as he kicked me surreptitiously under the table.  “Don’t you have a call to make Sammy?”

“Oh…” I fumbled for the phone in my pocket. “Yeah, right.” I pushed myself out of the booth and walked out onto the deserted sidewalk to ring home base.

“Sam,” the gruff voice on the end of the line had me smiling despite myself.

“Bobby, hey.  How are things?”  I leaned back against the wall of the building next to the diner, enjoying the feeling of the cold rough stone against the exposed skin of my arm.

“Just fine and damn dandy.  You call to tell me about that damn fool plan your brother cooked up for the ghosts in Kalamazoo?  ‘Cause he already beat ya to it and I can’t say I agree with it. The boy has lost his mind wastin’ that much energy and ammo on a ‘giest.”

“What? Uh, no…no.  Actually I am calling to see if you can get Jo or one of the others to tackle Kalamazoo.  I know they’re in Ohio right now, but we kinda stumbled onto another case here.”

“Whatcha on now?”

“Um… not sure really.  Possibly a cursed coin situation.”  An excessively loud silence followed my statement.

“Huh.  Must be some bad situation there.”  The words were spoken too softly to be casual.  Bobby didn’t do soft.

I forced myself to swallow.  “Yeah.  You know, the usual – people with insanely good luck.  Several deaths already so trying to cut it off before anymore shit hits the fan, ya know?”

“Uh-huh.”  I could hear Bobby’s total lack of belief in what I was saying. “You know I’d rather cut my nose off ‘fore I stuck it in where it ain’t welcome but…  this ain’t about what you shared the other night is it?”

Bobby always had been far too sharp. Why the hell did I tell him anything? Because I was eyeballs floating drunk off my ass, that’s why.  Jeez – I must be pretty bad off to discuss my-

“Sam,” his voice held cautious censure. “I don’t know who you were talkin’ about but whoever the girl is…  Well, love an’ such created by magic…just ain’t right. It’s corrupted. Don’t go doin’ anything stupid. You hear me?”

My face had to be flaming red at this point if the warmth flooding my cheeks was any indicator.  I cleared my throat and nodded, though obviously he couldn’t have seen that.  “Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. Nothing stupid. I swear.  Just doing the job.”

He made a non-committal noise and cleared his throat. “Just…call if you get in trouble. I’ll get someone on the hospital.”

“Thanks Bobby.”

I heard another voice in the background. Most definitely female. “Oh and Ellen says hi,” he mumbled quickly, the words crashing into each other in his rush to get them out. With that he hung up and I chuckled.

As I slid back into the booth, Dean was leaning back chewing absently on a straw, his back against the window and one leg kicked up on the seat.  My brother always looked comfortable in his skin.  The world was his living room and he treated it as such.  “So Bobby and Ellen are shacking up again,” I begin without preamble.

This got his attention, his face morphing back and forth between disbelief and something akin to amusement.  “That’s … that’s … what is that?”

I laugh. “Yeah I don’t know either. Good for them, though.”

“Yeah.  Good for them!  If anybody needs to get laid, it’s Bobby.”  Dean’s eyes strayed down and to the right as he processed the information. “Seems kinda… incestuous though, ya know?”

I choked on the sip of water I had just taken and stared dumbly at my brother.  “What?”

“Bobby and Ellen.”  Dean shook his head.  “S’kinda like having your dad and aunt bonin’.  Just…weird.”

I shifted uncomfortably and my jaw clenched with automatic unease.  I nodded however, knowing I should agree.  A normal person would agree, right?  “Yeah. Weird.”  I looked around trying to find anything I could to move the conversation in another direction.   “So what happened to the waitress?”

Dean shrugged one shoulder and smirked suddenly affecting his ‘God’s gift to women’ expression.  It was a look I was familiar with and frustratingly found both insufferable and endearing  “Supposed to meet her at the bar down the street after her shift.”

“Well, Bobby’s getting someone else on the hospital case so I’m gonna head back and start researching local wishing wells and possible sources of the curse.  Maybe try to connect our lucky citizens.”  I stood again and dropped a few bills on the table for our dinner.

“Wait up.  I’ll come with.”

We walked in silence the three blocks to the motel and it was all I could manage not to tell him just to go ahead to the bar. The less he had to do with this case the better.

“Gonna take a shower before I head back out. Road funk.” Dean tossed over his shoulder as he headed straight into the room that the motel insisted was a bathroom.  The lack of sink and the brick stall shower in the corner made me question but it would do. Especially since our funds were running spectacularly low.  If I didn’t know Dean would end up somehow magically scoring free beer at the bar all night, I would have given him the customary ‘watch the wad’ speech I gave him every time we were short on cash.

I immediately worked to ignore the fact that Dean was currently undressing in the room next to me.  Not healthy.  Nope.  Not healthy at all.

But that was kind of the point.  That’s why I was there – why I had sought out just the right case.   I needed to find that well, fountain, whatever the hell it was.  If it was giving away free wishes I was going to get mine granted before it ate me alive.

I mean, who in their right friggin’ mind falls in love with their brother?

Grabbing the laptop, I flopped onto the bed and reached to flip the bedside lamp on.  Only, I couldn’t seem to figure out how to turn it on.  Typically every motel in the lower 48 states had the same setup. Same two hard-as-rocks beds, same crappy stained furniture, same laminated side table with a Bible in the top drawer, same ancient land-line phone and a lamp that is at least thirty years past it’s style threshold.  The switch was always at the top, near the bulb.  One quarter turn and you got low lights, half turn for high beam, another half turn and it was off again.  It was the natural order of motel living and one of the few things that was a constant in my life.  This made the stupid crappy décor a lifeline to sanity as my world was washed red in crazy sauce all around me;

Crappy décor and a brother that always had my back. That was my normal. It was my life.

I moved my hands all around the neck, down to the base. Nothing.  Bemused, I felt around for hanging pull-cords. Next, I pulled the power cord itself up finally realizing that the damn thing wasn’t even plugged in.

On my hands and knees, I reached into the crevice behind the table and fumbled for a moment before I drove the plug home into the socket.  The blinding light that appears as a result had little to do with a sixty-watt bulb, of that I was certain.  It stung my eyes and I instinctively shielded them with my hand.

When the moment had passed, I scrambled back onto the bed and a slight figure stood before me as if out of thin air. I was too far away from the guns but I slipped my hand under the pillow where I knew my fingers would find the bone handle of Dean’s favorite bowie knife. 

 “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a distinctly feminine voice warned. I slid the knife out and at the same time glanced into the face of what surely must be an angel or fairy or something that would inspire the purest definition of beauty. The vision caught me up short.

“I…  What…”

“Complete sentences if you please.  This will go much smoother if you communicate and annunciate.”

“I’m sorry… what’s happening?  Who are you?”

“Ah, there.  Not so hard once you get going.  Well I think ‘who’ is irrelevant.  Perhaps, in your line of work, you should really be asking ‘what’ am I, no?”

“Fine.  What are you?”

The woman plopped unceremoniously down on the bed across from me and her lips spread in a glorious smile.  It reminded me of a warm spring afternoon or that feeling you get when you get really cold and then walk into a patch of sunlight. Like you’re being warmed straight to your core.

Her hair was as dark as coal and it was braided and coiled around her head - an effect that gave the impression of a crown. She wore a long garment that might have been a dress if it didn’t look like so many strings and swaths of loose cloth stitched together in a haphazard patchwork of greens and silver.

“I, Sam Winchester, am a Genie.”

All I could think to say was “Like, ‘I Dream of Jeannie?”  She quirked an eyebrow at this, clearly not amused.  “Okay… like a Jinn?”  From what I remembered they two were similar.  It was best to know what you were dealing with.

“The Jinn are a …distant relative, you might say.”

My eyes went wide at this.  Jinn, I knew.  They were evil beings that would string you up and drain everything out of you as you slumbered in blissful ignorance.  I cringed remembering finding Dean hanging in that cold room, his life force nearly sapped away.  He never would tell me what he saw or how he managed to pull himself out of it. Either way Jinn equaled very bad news.

“Do not fret, sweet boy.  Genies are nothing like those monstrous things. We share only a bloodline. No different than you having a cousin that you never speak to.  You exist separately yet the same blood runs through you.”

“Okay, so no trouble then?”  She shook her head.  No trouble.  My grip loosened but did not drop completely from the knife.  “So what are you doing here?”

“I believe you stole my question.”

“Excuse me?”  
  
“Well, you – lamp,” she indicated the ugly 70s throwback, “plug – poof.” She gestured to herself.  “I was called so I came.”

“Wait, so I plugged in a lamp and what? It pushed you out of it?” It sounded stupid even to me. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Look, big boy, I picked that lovely piece out myself. I’ve lived there for three millennia.  Not exactly my fault that some well-meaning hippy came along and thought I’d look ‘groovy’ on a side table fully wired, okay?”  She glanced back at the lamp.  I’ve grown accustomed to it though.  It’s great when I get passed along.  A whole new crop of wishers, new surroundings,” although even as she said it, she looked around the room and her nose wrinkled in distaste.

“Wait, so…lemme guess.” I did the mental math based on all of the examples of phenomenal luck.  “You’ve been here, in this motel for how long?  Three months?”

“Four.  The owner of this fine establishment got me for $3.99 at a thrift store upstate.  Ironically, he’s never bothered to plug me in himself.  That’s what half-hearted customer service will get you, I guess.”

“So the kid and the car?”

“He was running away from home.  Parents wouldn’t get him a car so he wished for one. He, of course, probably should have wished for better driving skills.”

“The mayor?”

“An illicit affair.  She was actually here three or four times before they even bothered trying to turn on the light.”

“Lottery winners?”

“Mostly passerby.  They were on vacations or drifters.  Kinda like you.”  She tilted her head from side to side like a deranged but lovely metronome.  “So here I am. Yours to command, yadda yadda yadda…”

“To command?  What, do I get three wishes?”  I said this in jest but realized it might actually be true.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes.  “Always with the three wishes.  A selfish lot you humans are.  No.”  She held up a single manicured finger.  “One.  A single wish.” At my thoughtful look, which she no doubt took for disappointment, she smiled tightly.  “That’s one more than you had five minutes ago, if I recall.”

“Sure!  It’s just…”  I knew enough to know that no matter how lovely the package, the magical mystery monster of the week would always find a way to get one over on you.  Even unicorns would stab you in the back as soon as look at you. No, too many bad things happening to the recipients of the one wish.  I had to find an iron clad wish that wouldn’t backfire and make things worse.

The Genie examined me in an unblinking stare. “Take your time. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

The problem was that I had a finite amount of time if I didn’t want Dean strolling out to find Barbara Eden, there, in all her magic glory.  Thank goodness Dean took the longest showers known to man.

As if on cue, his off key singing could be heard through the wall.  His rendition of Crazy Train was cutting in and out, staccato as he gargled against the shower spray. It was a sound I was fairly accustomed to.  It wasn’t cute or anything, but it was Dean.

What do I really want?

I wanted my brother.

Could I ask for Dean to love me?  Dean already loved me – I was his brother, so that was maybe too vague.  Perhaps adding ‘in that way’…  No. Bobby, though he obviously hadn’t realized what he was really advising me on, had been right about wishing for things like that.  I would always know that it was false if it was the result of magic, not to mention it seemed like an emotional violation.  Feeling-rape. I could never force that on Dean.

Maybe I was looking at this completely wrong. Maybe I needed to go the other way.  I could ask to be released from my own feelings.  It certainly would be a hell of a lot easier.  No more guilt.  No more irrational fear of him finding out.  No more distraction and self-loathing as I watched him go home with random girls and all I could do was hate them for having something I wanted and hate myself more for wanting it when I knew I shouldn’t.

Still, I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t loved Dean.  He was the other half of me.  He was an ass but no one made me laugh harder.  No one challenged me like he did; made me think clearer and outside the box. He made me stronger and kept me on my toes.  What would happen to our relationship if the feelings I clung so tightly to were suddenly gone? Would a fundamental part of me – of us – be gone as well?  What if it was the part that made us work as a team and as friends?  It seemed as though it might be like walking around without my soul intact.

Altering thoughts and emotions wasn’t an option.  I could see that.  SO what was left?  What could I ask for that wouldn’t effect free will or backfire like a son of a bitch?

A pure wish.  An honest wish.  That’s what it had to be.

“I think I have it.”

“I’ll ready the parade.”  She smiled crookedly, taking the sting out of her sarcasm.  “Well?”

“I want one night.”

“One night?”  She looked sideways at me.  “Need you to be ever so slightly more specific my dear.”

“I want one night in which I might do whatever I want or need to do and things would go right back to normal in the morning.”

“Sam,” she began with a heavy sigh. She reached across the way to cover my hand where it sat on my knee.  “I’ve been around a while.  If you can imagine, I’ve seen my fair share of wishes.  I know people and I know a thing or two about spotting the heart of people’s desires.  With some it never goes much deeper than ‘I want to be famous so I can totally score with any chick I want’.  Or ‘I want to be rich so I can sit on my ass all day watching Judge Judy and not have a lame-ass boss constantly looking over my shoulder’.  Seriously, that rarely gets me excited.”

She stood and stared down at me with an eerie stillness.

“But then there are people that wish with a white light within.  They wish for their child to be healed of disease, for money to help a friend or to take someone’s place in a bad situation.  For these, I feel compassion and long to help.  Yet it is my gift as well as my curse.  No matter the wish, the fine print will always be there.” Her words now held a slight edge. “Do you understand?”

I stared hard at the genie for a moment before nodding my assent, “Why are you telling me this?”

Her lips quirked up in one corner and she lightly tapped my nose. “I like you.”

She laughed outright at my dubious look, the sound like wind chimes on the breeze.  “Okay, I can see I won’t get anything by you.  In all honesty, I’m tired Sam.  Believe it or not, I don’t enjoy watching people be eaten alive in the throws of their own dream come true.  It’s especially hard with the sincere and good people that cross my path from time to time.”

She turned slightly and stared absently at the bad motel art on the far wall.  It was of seashore and the artist had felt the need to glue actual shells and starfish along the painted shoreline.  The colors were too bright to make the image seem real so it gave the impression that the artist in question might be in elementary school.

“In the beginning, it didn’t touch me. It was my duty – grant a wish, watch it bloom and then whither as it is with all things borne of this earth. It was all very in-line and matter-of-fact. Then as time wore on, I got such pleasure from it.  I would watch people getting their comeuppance.  How dare the mortals think they could handle the power of the wish? It was evil of me, but I was full of myself and my own perceived dominance.  I did my fair share of burning just to watch the flames. But now, after three thousand years…  I’m weary. I have warned others.” She turned her head and stared at me over her bare shoulder.  “I have.  Tried to show them and explain the pitfalls of even the most genuine seemingly innocuous wish. No one listens.”

“Every rose has its thorns?”  I sniffed a bitter laugh.  She was being honest, I was pretty sure of it. “Perhaps this is a bad idea then.”

“Perhaps.  Yet, maybe we can get around this. You aren’t exactly a normal human, after all.  Perhaps even my thorns will not prick the great Sam Winchester.”  She came towards me, slowly, eyeing me closely. I felt like a slide under a microscope. “I will make you a deal.”

I carded my fingers through my hair and trained my gaze on the floor.  What was I thinking?  Making deals? Hadn’t we learned this lesson five times over?

“Hear me out.”  When I made no reply, she took this as her cue to go on. “I will do everything in my power to make your wish as ironclad as possible with the least amount of blowback I can manage.  All you have to do is agree to destroy my vessel.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me correctly.”

I swallowed hard.  Was this even possible?  What was the lore on genies?  I tried to recall but nothing sprang readily to mind. Could I trust her? My inner Dean was already shaking his fist and kicking my ass.  Unfortunately my curiosity and desperation won out. “You know I have no reason to trust you.”

“True but you were wishing anyway.  What on Earth do you have to lose?”

 Only everything.  “Touche.”

“Okay, now let me think.”  She crossed her arms and tapped her fingers against her chin.  “Try this.  ‘You w___ to have tonight, this one single night, to act upon anything you see fit in any way you see fit with little to no negative consequence and all to be restored to as it is in this very moment with no ill effects to anyone involved and leaving only yourself with the memory of what transpired.’”

I blinked dumbly.  “U-um yeah.  Okay,” I laughed despite myself.

“Now you say it with the ‘W’ word.”

“Right.” I sighed and shook my head, already regretting what I was about to do.  “Okay, I wish… what you said.”

She smiled sadly but kindly all the same. “Then it is so.” She touched my forehead and a searing white-hot wave of energy pulsed through my brain and then vanished as quickly as it came on.  “You have one night to live without consequence, Sam,” she whispered directly into my ear. “Don’t waste it and don’t forget your promise.”

In the blink of an eye she was gone and I collapsed back onto the floor between the beds, darkness engulfing me.

 


	2. Chapter 2

** CHAPTER TWO **

 

When I came to, I was suddenly and immediately aware of Dean’s proximity as he bent over me, peppering my face with light slaps.

“Hey?  Sam. Sammy?  C’mon man – hey?”

I blinked several times to clear my vision and then sat up, befuddled.  Dean sat back on his heals and breathed a sigh of what seemed to be relief.

“What the…?  What happened?”

“You tell me.”

“I-,” I put a hand to my head and other than a slight headache everything seemed fairly normal.  “I guess I passed out?  I plugged the lamp in.  Maybe I got electrocuted?”  I looked at my hands. No marks.  I didn’t have any residual feeling of being shocked or damaged. 

“Yeah well I was in the shower and suddenly the lights start going all nuclear blast – ‘light of Heaven’ bright.  Thought all hell must be breakin’ loose. Get out here and all I see is you crumpled on the damn floor.  Scared the crap outta me!”  He collapsed back onto his backside and rubbed his hand down his face. I knew enough to see that my brother was slightly freaked out.

“I’m okay.”  I put my hand on his bare shoulder.   “I’m fine.”  It was at that moment I realized he was only wearing a sloppily tucked towel around his waist.  I cleared my throat and looked away quickly, drawing my hand back as I did so. “Uh…  I think I was just stunned or something. Feel fine.”

I glanced back and he was staring at me hard. “Well, be more careful Sammy.” He stood and readjusted his towel.   This time I couldn’t look away.  “I swear – we tag team monsters almost our whole lives for cryin’ out loud!  I am so not going to let you live it down if you get taken out by a short in a damn lamp.  Seriously dude, I’ll taunt your ass all the way into the afterlife!” I laugh at the words and the brotherly ear flick he gives me as he steps over my outstretched leg.

Pulling myself back onto the bed, I sit on the edge while I watch him pull fresh clothes from his duffel bag.  Jeans and a black v-neck tee.  I know the one.  It emphasizes his arms and is just tight enough to see the ripples of his chest and back muscles any time he moves.

He catches me watching him and raises an eyebrow. “Sure you’re okay?”

Then it hits me.  The lamp.  The woman. A Genie! 

I glance over at the eyesore on the table and wonder. Was it a hallucination? Did it happen?  

If I was a normal person, this wouldn’t really be a question.  I would just sweep it under the crazy rug and go about my life.  But once the veil is pierced, you pretty much just assume everything is real as opposed to soothing yourself into believing the monster in the closet is just a lack of illumination.  No.  It’s a freakin’ monster.  Just like, I had a pretty strong feeling that had been a freakin’ Genie.

I grabbed the laptop from the other side of the bed and started it up.  Research. That’s what I would do. I would see if what I experienced could be corroborated by the accounts of the ages.

Only…

I glanced back at the lamp.

If it was true, then…  I reached over and tapped the ceramic and glass surface.

“Hey!”  I snatched my hand back and Dean’s sharp outcry.  “What are you doing?”

I felt like I had been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing and overcompensated by scoffing loudly and talking far too quickly to be casual.  “Nothing!  No… I-I just… was wondering if there really is a short in the lamp.  I mean it’s on.  Maybe I should un-plug it.  So it’s off.  Yeah. I should right?”

“Sam!”  Dean barked.  “Step away from the lamp.”  He stared at me like I had two heads.  “Seriously? Come on.”  Dean grabbed my arm and pulled me up with a firm grip on my forearm.

“Where are we going?”

“Well, I’m going to the bar like I planned and now - since you’re acting all whacked out -  you are coming too.”

“Bu-,”

“Nuh-uh.  I’m not leaving you alone to fry yourself.  C’mon!”

I bit the inside of my cheek and wondered if this was really what I should be doing.  If the wish was real then how could I lose?  If the wish wasn’t real…?

I could just pretend like it was any other night. That way it was a win/win. No worries.  No backlash.  We could use the lamp for target practice tomorrow just to be safe. No muss, no fuss.

“Okay.  To the bar.”

 

* * * * *

 

The bar was crowded and full of coeds. It was on the outskirts of a college town and as near as I could tell, it was some kind of after party for a football game.  If the amount of free flowing alcohol was any clue, the team had done quite well.

Three cheerleaders in full uniform passed in front of our table and Dean bit his knuckle, following their scantily clothed forms. “God help me, I’ve died and gone to teenage Dean’s fantasy land.”  He chuckled and bumped my shoulder with his.

I shook my head in amusement.  As rough and tumble as Dean could be, he enjoyed laughing. Even as kids, no matter how cool he wanted to look, he had always played the comedian card when it presented itself.  It wasn’t until many years later that I realized he had been doing more than passing time and cracking jokes.  More precisely, he seemed to enjoy pulling smiles out of me.

“Get your head outta your ass, Sammy,” he would say. “Serious is great – it keeps you alive - but you gotta find reasons to smile.  And then what puts that smile on your face makes the stayin’ alive part worth it.”  To my utter annoyance, he was usually right and that wisdom was no exception.

I scanned the room out of habit, looking for possible threats, checking for exists, and I knew Dean would be doing the same. The hunt didn’t really allow for time off.  Once you knew things were there and knew the signs, relaxing was no longer in your vocabulary.

I stiffened seeing him pause and shift himself to look over the crowd towards the bar.  “What?”  He had seen something, I was sure of it.

“Oh-ho!  Brother, I think tonight is your lucky night.”

“How so?”

He clapped a hand on my back and my skin felt seared with the momentary contact.  With an enigmatic smile, he disappeared into the crowd without any further ado.

I tried to follow his progress as he moved towards the bar, but I couldn’t find him anywhere.  He didn’t seem to be worried.  Perhaps he had simply seen an opening and went for drinks. I had nearly convinced myself of this when a feeling of pins and needles washed over my skin. I quaked with the passing cold and then…nothing.  I was suddenly on high alert and frantically combed the bar, searching for my danger as well as my brother.  Dammit!

“Calm yourself,” A voice whispered directly into my ear.  “Only little ole me.” One moment there was nothing and the next, she was settled on the stool adjacent to me.

I knew my eyes were wide with shock but she just waved my surprise away.  “Yes. I’m real.”  She glanced around the surroundings and in the blink of an eye a martini appeared in her slight hand.  “Look,” she began, sipping gingerly at her drink. “Typically the little light show does little more than convince the humans that the whole thing was a dream. Cuts down on the theft and black market trading of yours truly.  Figured you might question.  Your wish…it was different.  Left a lot of wiggle room.  I had to make sure you would go thru with it.  I need you to hold up your end of the deal.”

She placed a finger over my lips as I began to reply. “No need,” she said gently. “I know what you’re thinking. If you do nothing, then nothing bad can possibly happen.  There is truth to that but you have to remember if you do nothing, then nothing good can happen either.”

Dean would have told her she was spouting fortune cookies but I saw the truth in her words, as much as I hated to admit it. When it came to this, I had held my cards so close to the vest that even I wasn’t sure what they all were anymore.

“I see the thoughts and possibilities that exist within you.  Each action contains within it the possibility of a million reactionary variations. You have been choosing the easy path for far too long.”  She leaned back, again sipping the martini, and surveyed the surroundings without much interest.  “Take the leap, dear boy.  Find out where the road less traveled leads you for once.”

In a blink, she was gone again2.  Not a soul seemed to have noticed that she was ever there at all.

This left me with a rather difficult choice. If the wish was active, I could choose to ignore the gift in front of me – a free pass for the night – and remain relatively safe from an inevitable backlash or I could risk my heart and roll the dice.  On the one hand, if I ignored the opportunity, I would forever wonder what might have happened. If I rolled the dice and Dean rejected me, it would pain me but I would at the very least know where things stood. Maybe move on with life. But what if my brother called me a freak?  What if he was disgusted by the unnatural love and attraction his little brother couldn’t seem to stop feeling.  I wasn’t quite sure I could live with that either.

“Sammy,” Dean began, appearing again at my side, a pitcher of beer gripped above his head as he maneuvered his way through the unmoving sea of people.  The shit-eating grin on his face put my guard up.  Usually it meant I was about to get pulled into something without my knowledge or consent.  “Get ready to bow down with gratitude, little brother.”  He had leaned in to say this and his lips were inches from my ear, hot breath down the side of my neck sending ripples of teasing pleasure racing through me.  My toes curled as my mind began to drift to imagination mode, thinking just what that hot breath would feel like against my-  “You remember Starla.”

I blinked my way back to reality and stared blankly at the attractive blonde that had waited on us at the diner.  She had apparently followed him back through the crowd. “Well, this,” he put his arm around a second blonde that appeared at his other side.  I did a double take.  “This is Starla’s twin sister, Abby.”  The women were identical and from his place, sandwiched between them, my brother’s eyebrows shot up on a look that screamed ‘ready to kiss my feet yet?’. 

My total lack of response prompted a ‘c’mon what’s the matter with you?’ stare and then a clenched-jawed ‘you need to stop thinking so much’.

“Abby,” Dean finally took the initiative for me. “This is my brother, Sam. He’s a little shy at first,” - a ‘get in the game’ mock-glare my way - “but we’ll change that, right?”

The girls both giggled and perched on the stools flanking mine, Abby taking the seat that the Genie had occupied only moments before. After beer was distributed into plastic cups for each of us, a waitress approached with a tray laden with all types of colorful liquid concoctions.  She immediately sat eight full-to-the-brim shot glasses down in front of Dean who slid them carefully to each of us.  A bit of the amber liquid sloshed onto his hand and I watched as he pulled it to his mouth, seemingly in slow motion, and sucked the liquor from his finger.

I moaned automatically and coughed to cover it up.

“All right, raise ‘em high!”

I looked down at the shot glass in front of me and back at my brother.  “Seriously Dean?”

“No.  Not seriously, Sam.  That’s the point.”  He raised his shot glass and the girls followed suit.  “To being as un-serious as possible.”  He stared at me and, maybe it was my imagination, there was a challenge in his smirk.

For a moment, I contemplated the small glass that had been thrust at me and then on pure impulse – something like closing your eyes and jumping into a lake when you know the water is going to be ice cold – I tipped my head back and polished it off without another moment’s hesitation. I gritted my teeth against the burn and then took a long pull off my glass of beer.

“Yeah!  That’s what I’m talking about!”  Dean hooted and followed suit.  The twins laughed with matching laughs and I felt the unmistakable tickle of fingers stroking my thigh.  I sputtered around my second mouthful of beer and looked to see Abby looking prettily at me from beneath her long lashes.

My eyes roamed over the attractive woman that she was and yet nothing stirred within me.  I found my gaze traveling over to Dean, who was leaning in to whisper in Starla’s ear.  His fingertips skimmed the side of her bare shoulder and he laughed at something that was said as she pressed her lips to his ear.  Before I could turn away, he caught my gaze and I watched open mouthed as his eyes turned sultry and languid.  I knew it had to do with whatever was being whispered by Starla, but in all the years I’d seen him flirting with women, I’d never noticed him look so lustfully at anyone.  It was unnerving and I seemed to be on the receiving end.

After a moment the light seemed to flicker in his eyes as if he realized what he had been doing and he looked away, anywhere but at me. The girls excused themselves to go to the powder room and Dean took Abby’s seat.  “Hey, Sammy…  Uh…” He was fidgeting with his watch and shifting on the stool to the point that it was making me jumpy.

“What’s up?”

“Okay, here’s the deal.  The girls, they… they’re really into brothers. Seems they’ve always wanted to…” Dean glanced up at me but then seemed to immediately realize it was a mistake because he just as quickly shifted his gaze to the beer in front of him.  “They want to havefursme.”

“Wait… a what?”  I was genuinely confused.

“A foursome, Sammy.  They want to… ya know…  They like sharing.  So…” Dean put his hands up and shifted them both up and down in opposition as if weighing something in his palms.

“So…  you mean they like to share?  Are you fucking with me, man?  This is…”

“Hot right?”  He leered and it was all I could do not to shove my tongue down his throat in my excitement over the possibility laid out in front of me on a silver platter.

I tried not to show any excitement. It wouldn’t do to seem too keen. “Um, I guess that would be… okay. Are you sure you are okay with this?” I wondered if Dean realized just how far this was taking things.  We had grown up together, hearing but pretending not to hear the other jerking off in the bed across the room.  We had walked in on each other with girls before.  We had talked size, color, duration, all kinds of personal details, but a no-holds barred sex-fest?  There was no way they were gonna be able to stay in separate corners.  Surely Dean realized that.

“Look, just think about it.  If you don’t want to, no sweat.”

The girls came back at this point, grinning like Cheshire cats.  “Would you like to get out of here?”  Starla asked the table, although she was looking openly at me now.  As was Abby.  As was Dean.  His hot gaze making me shift in my seat for a reason entirely other than being nervous.

I looked at the second shot in front of each of us and I picked up mine, holding it aloft in a toast.  “Down the rabbit hole.”  If any of them got the reference they didn’t comment. I downed the shot and breathed through the fire, my nostrils flaring and my eyes never leaving Dean’s.

 


	3. Chapter 3

** CHAPTER THREE **

 

Starla and Abby didn’t even wait until the door to the motel was closed before they started stripping each other. 

I could only imagine that my expression mirrored Dean’s as he looked shell shocked by the complete lack of inhibition kneeling on the bed before us.  I stumbled mid-stride and Dean slammed into me from behind, his attention solely on the girls.

I was impressed.  They seemed fairly practiced in this as they pulled at layers and gently but efficiently worked each other down to only their underwear. Surprisingly that did not match. Abby was on her knees on the bed in a black and red striped set complete with stockings and garters, while Starla had a hot pink and black zebra print running across the satin of her tiny panties and no bra as apparently she was surgically enhanced past the point of needing support.

My dick jumped at the sight of the twins touching and petting one another gently.  Nothing heavy yet.  They kept looking up at Dean and me where we stood at the foot of the queen bed, teasing us with the movements and soft mewling sounds. Practically begging for approval.

It wasn’t until Abby yanked my jacket down my arms that I realized what was truly about to take place.  I looked nervously at my brother, who was already naked except for the pants that Starla already had halfway down to his knees.

He seemed entranced, his eyes pointedly staring at the bed or Starla’s head or the ceiling.  Anywhere but at me.  It was a guy thing.  Like peeing at a urinal.  You just didn’t look. Except I held my breath, watching Starla put her fingers in the groove between Dean’s skin and his boxer briefs that were already tented impressively.

“Oh my!” I heard Abby gasp and looked down to see her grinning up at me.  She already had my shirt off and I was stepping out of my jeans, but she was extremely impatient and had already started palming me through my boxers. “You are a big boy, aren’t you?”

Dean looked then.  Long and hard.  I saw it.  I watched him stare at Abby’s hand as it worked over the thin cotton.  Finally she pulled the shorts down as well and I didn’t spare her a thought.  My attention was one hundred percent on the man standing four feet from me, staring slack-jawed at my package.

I wanted to crow.  I wanted to show him.  I wanted to…

I pushed Abby gently off of me.  She obediently moved back to the center of the bed, her sister moving to kneel behind her and they both watched with identical faces of awe as I began stroking my hardened length.  I had eyes only on Dean, however, and I couldn’t ignore that every rush of blood pumping through my shaft was now for him and him alone.

Perhaps he felt my eyes boring into him. Maybe we had finally reached a place of mental telepathy and my silent chanting of ‘look at me, look at me’ was working.  Whatever it was, his eyes lazily raked upward, burning a path in my skin with the heat of his stare. Finally he reached my eyes and there was a slight look of fear when he came to the realization that my eyes were tracking his own.  He knew I had seen him watching.  There was no denying it.  Just like there was no denying the hunger I saw tucked just behind the alarm.

It was in that moment that I finally grasped that perhaps it wasn’t just me.  Maybe Dean had simply never entertained the notion that we might…  It wasn’t as if we had ever done anything like this and Dean, being Dean, would have just pushed off any out-of-place feelings as brotherly affection.

I pulled my lips between my teeth and then released them, letting my tongue slide slowly over first the top then the bottom. Dean watched engrossed.

I stroked upward unhurriedly, moving my hand all the way to the tip and spreading pre-cum with my thumb before stroking downward again. Almost absently, like someone watching porn all alone, Dean’s hand went to his own dick, pulling the boxer briefs down to free himself.  He began mirroring me, his eyes trained downward to watch my movement.

When I saw his mouth fall open with the sheer pleasure brought merely by his own hand, I groaned deeply, a feral sound in the back of my throat.  The noise caused Dean’s gaze to flick upward, meeting my own.  Breath held, eyes locked.

I crossed the space between us in a fraction of a heartbeat and pushed Dean against the far wall.  My hands were at his shoulders, not so much pinning him in place as they were soothing and kneading the muscles.  “Like what you see?”  I whispered roughly.

Dean swallowed hard but never broke our stare. He wasn’t going to back out now. Wasn’t going to be the guy to back out when there was obviously an interesting challenge in front of his face. “Sammy,” he started, the word a lifeline thrown to our last vestiges of normalcy.  But what could he say?  Don’t do this?  We can’t?  This is wrong?

I felt Dean push his hips forward to grind himself against my thigh.  It was reflexive but Dean was aware of what he was doing all the same.  In that moment I knew what my brother needed. What he was craving. Me, pure and simple.

“Dean, take your own advice and stop thinking so much.” I punctuated this by wrapping my fingers around the nape of his neck and yanking him forward. Our lips met in a crushing joining of flesh and blazing heat.

“Guys?”  I heard one of the girls say after several minutes. 

We ignored them.  I don’t even know if Dean heard them.  Likely, he hadn’t as he was being distracted by the fact that I had kissed, licked and bitten every inch of his chest and had fallen to my knees in front of him.

My face now level with his crotch, he watched me keenly and instinctively jutted his hips forward.  He caught my chin between fingers.  “You drunk, Sammy?”  It was a ridiculous question.  We had only had three or four beers between us and a few shots on top of that. That would just get us started some nights.  Over the years we had both developed a pretty high tolerance.  It didn’t work to have a full on tilt-a-whirl buzz going when you knew it was pretty much always cloudy with a chance of monsters.

“Suddenly sober as a judge.”

“Yeah.” He whispered and nodded as he watched his thumb trace my bottom lip.  I pulled the digit in my mouth with a light pressure, grazing my teeth across the pad and Dean groaned, knowing I was about to do the same thing in a much more highly sensitive area. 

I worked my hands around his strong calves and slowly inched my hands up until I reached his underwear, which had never been fully removed.  I eased them down as slowly as I could manage and in a fit of impatience, his fingers laced through my hair and gently but firmly yanked.

“Sam,” he rasped.  It was both a command and a plea.

I heard shuffling movement and muttering behind me but I didn’t stop to think about it as I pressed forward, my face buried in the join between his right leg and his scrotum.  I nosed at his balls and lapped at them with my tongue. My hands palmed his ass, squeezing the tight muscles.

His head snapped back and thrashed. “Quit teasin’.”

I smirked to myself.  He didn’t know what teasing was.  I moved my tongue to his shaft and placed feather light kisses along the length, tasting him slowly and in small portions.  After years of dreaming about it, I wasn’t about to rush it now.  I moved and pulled some of the juice already spilling from the tip into my mouth, savoring the heady flavor that was one hundred percent Dean.

“Shit!”  he hissed.  I chuckled and he jerked, quickly looked down at me.  “Somethin’ funny?”

I took advantage of having his full attention and swooped in, taking his gorgeously thick cock into my mouth, deep-throating with one easy movement.

“Son of a- ” his face screwed up in unadulterated pleasure.  It was beautiful. Even as I worked him with a gentle pulling force, I watched him writhe against the wall, my rhythm building with his own wild bucking movements.

It wasn’t long before I could feel him tensing, locked and loaded and ready for release.  He tapped my head but I wouldn’t budge.  “Sammy.  Gonna… about to…”  I increased the pressure just so and brushed my knuckles against his balls.  This sent him over the ledge as he understood my message.  Just let go.

I took in and swallowed all of him greedily, feeling the connection grow instead of fade as the taste locked on my tongue. I stood and immediately placed my lips against his.  In some primal instinctual way, I wanted and needed my brother to taste himself on me. To recognize that it was my mouth that had gotten him off.

The kiss began simply enough, but quickly it grew rough and Dean’s tongue pushed past my lips, drinking in his own unique flavor. He moaned pulled me to him with his hands on my hips.  “You need a hand?”

I said nothing, lost in the simple act of kissing, however he took that as surrender and I gasped against his beautiful mouth as his hand closed around my own erection.

I hadn’t touched myself the entire time I had been taking care of him and I was leaking heavily.  He used that to lubricate his fist as he began pumping me in earnest.

I pulled away from his mouth and our foreheads met as I struggled to keep my eyes open.  It was a natural instinct to close them when things felt that good but good was an understatement and I wanted nothing more than to look at Dean with full knowledge that it was his hand around me, pulling me towards bliss.

It only took a few minutes as I was worked up before we started, but when I came it was with my tongue down his throat and our eyes locked..

After I was spent, I looked down at my cum splattered across our stomachs and Dean laughed.

“Something funny?” I echoed him, but smiled dazedly all the same.

“Dude, there is not a damn thing funny about this. However, that’s kinda amusing.” He tilted his head towards the opposite side of the room and I glanced over my shoulder to see that we were alone. The girls had taken off.

“Guess… that wasn’t what they had in mind?” I laughed and placed my forehead against Dean’s.

“We should check that our wallets are still there.” He pushed at my shoulder gently, letting me know he wasn’t just checking out on me.  “And probably shower.”  His nose wrinkled as he looked down at the mess on his stomach. Picking up a discarded shirt from the floor, Dean wiped at his abs.  “You can go first.”

I nodded suddenly a little out of sorts, unsure now that the moment was coming to an end, and closed the bathroom door out of habit.

As I stepped under the hot if weak spray of the shower, I replayed the last half hour in my mind over and over.  I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face but there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that wouldn’t let me entirely enjoy the moment.

I touched myself, my lips, my dick… all had been branded physically by my big brother and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen but I knew Dean had been there with me.  It hadn’t been coerced and it hadn’t been a drunken accident.  It had been a decision to give in to something that had already existed.  It may have surprised my brother but there was no way he could deny that the want had been there underneath.  Maybe all along.

When I stepped out into the room, Dean was sitting on the bed in his boxers, looking off into space.

“You okay?” I asked, automatically, adjusting the towel around my waist.

He sniffed a laugh and nodded.  When he moved, it was stiff, as if he had been sleeping for hours and had to get his muscles worked out.  “Leave any hot water?”

It was a rhetorical question.  Something to fill the empty space.  I recognized it as something I was used to, just maybe not on Dean.  It was insecurity.

“Hey?” I called out, before he could shut the door between us.

“Yeah?”

I pushed the door open a bit further and claimed his mouth with my own.  This time it wasn’t hard and sexually charged.  This kiss was gentle and chaste but with the promise of more.

Dean bit his top lip and smiled slightly. “I’ll hurry.  We should maybe talk.”  He closed the door on that and I rested my forehead against the thin wood as I heard the shower start.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

 

I got dressed in the clothes I had worn earlier and found myself outside.  I needed a breather to figure out what the hell just happened.  I mean, I knew what just happened.  I just didn’t know what it all meant – if anything. It was too bad I didn’t smoke. It had been gross the few times I’d tried it in college, but if I did smoke then this would’ve been a perfect time.  It definitely felt like the kind of night that needed a calming vice thrown in.

I was replaying the whole scene for the fifteenth time when it hit me.  What had been bothering me?  Tomorrow I would remember every bit of tonight and Dean wouldn’t.

That had seemed such a blessing at the time. I had wanted to dip my toe in the water. I had expected to be burned, shut down completely, and be grateful for the reprieve that came with Dean not remembering a thing.  I had expected to get on with my life, knowing for sure what could never be.

There was a Grand Canyon sized flaw in this that I had simply not occurred to me.  Dean actually shared my feelings.  Or at least he did physically.  Now I knew that Dean at least wanted me.  Maybe it wasn’t something he wanted as a full time position or anything, but I finally knew I wasn’t alone in the attraction and it made things easier somehow.  I wanted him to remember what happened.

Dammit!  If only I hadn’t touched that stupid lamp!

“Sam?”  I ignored this.  I didn’t know if I wanted to do this.  Didn’t know if I could have this conversation.  Didn’t know if I could go any further with the knowledge that it would all be gone tomorrow.  What had been a blessing was quickly becoming a frustration.

 “Not gonna be able to ignore me forever.” Dean tossed out from the doorway, sighing when he realized there would be no reply.  “Bitch.”

“Jerk,” I muttered under my breath.

“Heard that.”

I sat for probably another five minutes, stewing over the pros and cons of telling Dean anything, before I realized that sitting there would do nothing and went in search of a momentary distraction.

When I got back to the room ten minutes later, Dean looked shocked to see me.  Perhaps he though I had taken off.

“Surprise, I come bearing gifts!”  I emptied the front of my shirt, various candy, snacks and sodas tumbling down onto the bed that Starla and Abby had been on not an hour before. 

“Dude, you are a man after my own heart,” It was said in jest as Dean surveyed the spread, immediately grabbing at all of his favorite junk food. When he realized what came out of his mouth, we blinked at one another with twin expressions of apprehension.

“Dean,” I began, not really knowing where to go with it.

“Sammy…  What the hell happened earlier?”

Well that was one way to go.  I shrugged trying my best to look nonchalant. “We got off.”

“Was that it?”  He scratched at the back of his neck.  “Seemed odd seeing as how there were two hot girls right here and somehow I found myself balls deep in your mouth.”

His words and the splendid visual he created with a simple sentence, caused my dick to twitch in my pants and I cleared my throat. “It…was the heat of the moment.”

“Yeah.  True.  Except I get the feeling maybe it wasn’t.”

I sat on the bed and toyed idly with the packaging on the granola bar I had gotten for myself.   What was the point of this conversation? Did they have to hash it out now? Why couldn’t they simply enjoy the night and let it be?

“Have you…ever thought about it?” Dean asked, sitting on the other bed, clad only in his jeans.

What did I have to loose?  “Yeah.”  He nodded.  “You?”

“Honestly?  Once or twice.  I would find myself watching you and forgetting you’re my brother.  I thought I was messed up.  Thought it was something wrong with me.”

“Not wrong.  Just… us.  We’ve always had a connection.”

“Yeah.  Just not so much at our dicks.”

I laughed at his crude observation. “Maybe it’s been a long time coming.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“Dean, I have something to tell you…” I would tell him about the Genie.  Tell him about the wish.  We would figure it out and maybe tomorrow… 

No, tomorrow he would wake up with no memory of how he felt or what he was thinking or anything he said.  The slate would be wiped clean and there was no guarantee that I could create a situation that he would respond to so naturally. If I explained or came on to him… I knew Dean.  If it wasn’t in some way his idea then he would never accept it.   He would shut down with some sort of caustic remark and that would be the end of it. Stubborn ass.

“What?”

I looked at his face, relaxed even in the seriousness of the conversation.  His eyes were lit from behind with something I had never seen there before. Like…maybe he was actually happy to his core in that one moment.  The half smile he graced me with was more than I could take.  “Nothing.”  I could only do one thing now.  Enjoy what I could get.  Enjoy this and hope that maybe some day I could find a way back to him; to this kind of togetherness.

I grabbed his hand, pulled the candy bar from it and tossed it on the bed before pulling him to the second bed.  “Will you lay with me?”

“Sammy, I didn’t know you were such a cuddler.” Dean quipped, but followed and we huddled under the covers together, Dean pulling me into his arms. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, Sammy.  How we’ll feel.  I don’t… I don’t know that I see how this could ever work, but I want you to know that I don’t regret it.”

I looked up at Dean and could feel moisture at the corner of my eye and a weight heavy on my heart.  I swallowed it down and nodded.  “Thank you.  Me neither.”

We stayed like that for hours, not talking but occasionally kissing or touching as if reassuring ourselves that the other was there. It was utterly against my own will that I finally fell asleep, unable to keep my eyes open a single minute longer.

 

* * *

 

The next morning I woke up alone.

My eyes had not even opened yet, but I could tell that the bed beside me was cold and I strained to hear sounds that would indicate Dean’s presence.  All I could make out was the constant rattle in the motel room window unit, the drip-drip-drip of the leaky shower head, the ticking of my own watch which I had never taken off the night before… but no Dean.

I finally blinked my eyes open, taking in a brightness that told me it had to be around eight or nine at the very latest. I didn’t usually sleep that late. I sat up and scanned the room. His duffel bag was still there. The computer was open on the small round table by the kitchenette and a soda can along with several empty wrappers littered the surface around it.

At least Dean hadn’t woken up in a panic and bolted. How must it have looked? He would have woken up next to me, half naked, likely one of us spooning the other and no memory of how or what happened.  Surely that would have his brother spiraling in unease at the very least.  Knowing Dean, I would’ve put my money on him pretending like nothing was out of sorts.  If he didn’t remember and he couldn’t explain then it didn’t happen.

The weight I felt in my own chest was still there and I feared it might never go away.  I rubbed my hand in small circles over my heart.  This would be my penance for accepting the wish. The Genie had warned me that there was always fine print.  The gift of knowledge would be my burden.

Dean had been right.  It wouldn’t work.  Luckily for him he would never know what might have been.  But I could still feel him against me. Could still smell him and taste him.

Sluggishly, I went to the bathroom, finally giving in to my need to relieve myself.  Splashing water on my face, I stared long and hard at my reflection in the dulled old mirror.  I took in the beard burn that ran along my jaw and neck.  There was also a dark purplish red strawberry mark on the skin just beneath my left ear.  I touched the mark with no small amount of reverence, recalling the feel of Dean’s mouth pulling at the skin before soothingly licking it and blowing gently. I had shivered deliciously and Dean had chuckled at my reaction then held me tight and fast when I tried to retaliate.

With a resigned sigh, I turned from the bathroom and moved towards the laptop.  I tapped at the space bar to clear the screen saver.  Perhaps whatever he had been looking at would give me a clue as to where my brother had gone.

Before the web page had a chance to load, the door opened and Dean crossed the threshold, his arms weighed down with grocery sacks and one hand precariously balancing two cups of coffee, one on top of the other.  Taking the top cup, he thrust it at me silently and put the bags down on the unused bed.

“Hey-,” I began somewhat awkwardly. Dean threw a hand up, stopping me mid-word.  He tipped his coffee back for several long seconds and then tossed the now empty cup towards the trash can, ringing it easily.

He smirked cockily at this.  “Now you may speak,” he pronounced magnanimously. I snorted and shook my head ruefully.  Coffee addict.

“Where were you?”  I tried to make it sound fairly innocuous as far as questions go. Just curiosity. In my own head, my voice sounded far too much like that of an insecure lover.

“Getting some necessary supplies.”  He pulled plastic containers from the first sack and placed them on top of the table, along with condiment packets and plastic eating utencils.  “Got pancakes and eggs and stuff.  Didn’t know what you wanted.  Don’t worry, that one,” he pointed at the container closest to me, “is all egg whites, cholesterol free whole wheat whatevers.  Healthiest plate they had.  Coffee is black, one sugar, right?”

“Yeah.” I smiled slightly, bemused, sipping the hot liquid only to wince as I burned my tongue.  “Um, thanks man.  That’s really…thoughtful.”

He ignored me, pulling out a plastic fork and attacking his own plate with gusto.  I followed suit, eating more out of gratitude for the gesture than for the fact that I was hungry.  The food tasted like ash on my tongue, my stomach in knots, my brain still providing flashes of imagery from the night before.

“So,” I inclined my head towards the other bags, looking for something, anything that would take my mind off the fact that I was currently envying a damn piece of bacon that was passing his lips and touching his tongue.  “What’s in the bags?”

He shook his head and wiped his hands on the knees of his jeans.  “Supplies for a sort of salt and burn.”

I frowned.  “Salt and burn?  Did I miss a vengeful spirit somewhere?”  I leaned past him to look into the bags.  Kerosene, rock salt, chalk and several herbs that seemed familiar but certainly not for cooking.  Not the usual supplies.  I had never seen the combination.

“This particular salt and burn is more like…gas and melt.”

I shook my head.  “I’m confused.”

He stared at me hard for a moment and turned the laptop towards me so that I could finally make out the script scrawled across the top of the page.

THE MYTHOS & LORE OF GENIES & JINN

“Wait…  Wait, I don’t…”

Dean rolled his eyes.  “Don’t play stupid Sammy.  I know you made a wish.  She told me.”

“Wait! What?!  What is going on here?”  I was suddenly and extremely thrown.  When did he…?  How did he… ?  Does he …?

 “Look, we can hash out the whys and wherefores later but right now we got a promise to keep.”   He crossed to the bedside table, snatching the lamp, the cord snapping up as the plug was yanked from the socket roughly. “And we need to get this lady on the pyre before she changes her mind and something bites us in the ass. Got it?”

I nodded mutely.  It was all I could do.

 

* * *

 

It took ten minutes for us to hump out after Dean finished eating.  I grabbed our gear and loaded the car while he wrapped the lamp in a pillowcase and went to check out. We were pretty adept at clearing out with a minimal amount of time and effort.  We’d certainly had our fair share of practice over the years.

When we were on the road, I finally got up the nerve to ask.

“How did you know?”

Dean looked at me sideways, taking his eyes off the road for only a few seconds at a time.  He seemed to be mulling over what to say and was gripping the steering wheel like it was a life raft.

“After… after what happened last night… when you went outside-,”

“Wait, you remember last night?”

“Of course I remember last night, you dumbass.”

“But-but, I-”

“Tried to wish it all away?”  Dean smiled and I knew he hadn’t meant that to be hurtful. But it kind of was anyway.

“No.  I…just didn’t know how you would take it.  I needed to know.”

“Yeah.  I figured.”

“So you still haven’t told me how you knew.”

“Well, if you recall, I tried and you interrupted. Now you wanna shut your trap and let me talk?”  I said nothing whatsoever.  “Okay. So after you gave me a…” he bit back a smile, “spectacular blowjob,”  Dean shook his head as though he couldn’t believe what he just said. “You were off outside actin’ like a moping drama queen feelin all your feelings.  I saw the lamp and remembered you got zapped so decided to unplug it.  Had to wiggle the damn thing around to get it out but then I couldn’t see any signs of shorts so I plugged it in myself.”  I shot him a dirty look for putting himself in danger.  “Calm yourself.  I had a piece of rubber I was using as a buffer. Anyway, I plug the damn thing in and suddenly there’s a woman standing there, bare ass naked.”

“What?!”

“Just seeing if you were payin’ attention.” He turned the car off the main road and onto a dirt road that ran along the edge of a corn field. I wasn’t sure if Dean knew where he was going or if he was just following his gut for a burning spot. “Anyway, the Genie chick does her whole spiel.  One wish, yadda yadda… I had already put two and two together mind you.  I knew your dumb ass had seen her.  There was no freakin’ way what happened earlier didn’t tie in with the lady in the lamp. So I asked her. She wasn’t too friendly at first but then…  Well, let’s just say I charmed her into telling me your wish.”

Dean shrugged and maneuvered the car further past the obvious dirt road and onto an overgrown path that ran into the woods. “I get it Sam. I really do.  Don’t blame you.  It’s not exactly something you could come at me straight with. I know I don’t always make sharing things easy.”

He finally pulled the car to a halt in a clearing, which was mostly surrounded by tall pines.  We pulled the supplies from the back seat and retrieved the lamp from the trunk where it had been shoved between the machetes and extra salt rounds.  Dean directed me to create a circle of rocks and he began mixing the herbs and chalk. We stacked fallen pine needles in a small mound within the circle and he poured the mixture directly in the center chanting Latin all the while, then a ring of kerosene around it, and finally placed the lamp atop the center ring.

“Lighter?” I ask, feeling my pockets. Dean produced one from his pocket and flipped it open, lighting it at the same time.  Before he could toss the lighter, a figure appeared before us hovering just above the lamp.

“Why hello, gentlemen.”

Dean and I glance at one another and then at the Genie, wondering the same thing.  Was she backing out?  Had she felt the end coming and railed against it at the last moment?

“No worried faces.  I stand by my word.  I simply wanted to thank you both for following through. I knew two big hunters like yourselves could get the job done.”

“What will happen to you?”  I felt compelled to ask.

The Genie crossed her arms and tilted her head in thought.  “I’ve been wondering that for thousands of years.  It could be absolutely nothing.  Or it could be everything.  I just think it’s time to take the chance.”  

“Um… thanks.  I guess,” I mumbled.  I felt Dean stare at me but I kept my eyes on the woman.

“Yeah,” Dean said, clearing his through. “Thank you.”  It was my turn to stare at him.  He was grimacing and still holding the lighter. With a graceful bowing nod from the Genie, he tossed the silver square, igniting everything inside the circle. Her image slowly faded and a cloud of green vapor settled on the ground around us before dissipating.

We stood there together for a long time, watching the unnaturally blue flames licking at the metal and glass. The silence that he stretched between us was a comfortable one, but there was still something bothering me.

“There’s something you never told me,” I asked, leaning back against the trunk of the Impala.

Dean moved to sit beside me, his leg touching mine. “What’s that?”

“How did you remember what happened last night?”

“She told me what you wished and about your deal. I just made the same deal after I wished to unwish your wish.”

I tried to follow the train of thought and laughed out loud when I realized what he had said.  “So… basically you cancelled my order?”

“Lucky for you.”

“I don’t know.  I think it’s lucky for you seeing as how I gave you such a... how did you put it?  Oh yeah! A ‘spectacular blowjob’?”

Dean punched my shoulder.  “Asshat.”

“So, you knew.  You knew you could either remember or not remember. You chose to remember.”

“No,” he immediately denied, although there was just slightly too much protestation for it to be believable. “I chose to save your ass. Wishes never come out right. You know that. Fine print.”

“Except that you made a wish too.”

“I made an un-wish.”

“Uh-huh.  One more thing.”  I bumped his shoulder and Dean groaned knowing he didn’t want to hear the next question. “What did you do to convince her to tell you my wish?”

“C’mon Sammy.  You know me.  I charmed the shit outta her.”  At my dubious look, he rolled his eyes.  “Fine.  I told her that I loved you and I didn’t want you getting hurt.”

“Aww… you love me?”

“Dude.”  Dean moved away from me and I worried I had crossed some weird unspoken line. That is, until he swung around and planted himself between my legs.  He proceeded to grip my legs beneath my knees and yank me forward until I was pressed hotly against him.  “Yeah,” he spat with no venom.  “Apparently I do.  Maybe more than I should. But fuck it.”

He traced the line of my jaw with his fingers letting his thumb ghost over the hickey he had left the night before. He growled low in his throat, the sight of his mark on me turning him on.

I allowed him to pace things and he didn’t disappoint. His fingers pushed into my hair and pulled me to him, our mouths finding each other once again and our tongues fought in a heady battle of wills.

Dean pressed me back onto the trunk and wrapped one of my legs around his waist as he pushed ever closer, rubbing against me. We were both hard and ready and I knew no matter how far we went that night, that week, that month, that year… we were going together.  Eyes open and every glorious moment forever burned into our memories.


End file.
